OUR VIEW: Bunker mentality

Sunday

Jun 3, 2018 at 2:00 AM

A little-known local facet of the Cold War came to light this month, as Nantucket Parks and Recreation Commission Chairwoman Cheryl Emery and others suggested converting a 1960s-era bunker, designed for use by President John F. Kennedy, into a museum. The idea has merit on a number of levels, both as a reminder of this nation's terrifying past living in the shadow of nuclear annihilation, and as a warning about what happens when saber rattling moves beyond talk and into action.

From the outside, the Nantucket bunker does not look like much; a dilapidated, mold-encrusted door built into the side of a hill, surrounded by a failing retaining wall. Inside the space, which is owned by the town, is filled with saw horses and empty storage barrels. Its most recent tenants? The Nantucket Hunting Association.

But when Kennedy was sworn into office in 1960, the site, located at the Navy’s base on Nantucket, underwent a frightening transformation into a 1,900-square-foot bunker designed to house Kennedy and his family in the event of a nuclear attack. It would have also served as a command post from which he could coordinate the nation’s response.

Selected because it was unlikely to be on the Soviet list as a prime target, the Nantucket bunker was decommissioned after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. It was soon thereafter emptied and has remained largely vacant since. However, a similar facility from the same era, located in Palm Beach, Florida, enjoyed a 25-year run as a historically themed museum, complete with period-appropriate furniture, a diesel-fueled generator, and showers designed to reduce nuclear contamination.

Located on Peanut Island, the Florida facility offers a suggestion of the potential and the pitfalls of restoring such a space. Back in 1992, the Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach leased the bunker, which is set on the grounds of a former Coast Guard station, to Andrew Miller. A 2014 report on the facility, however, uncovered a number of outstanding issues. As a result, the bunker museum closed in October of last year, with all of its contents removed with the intent of re-displaying them at a separate Kennedy museum. Palm Beach County is reportedly considering an option to take over the bunker.

Now, however, the former owner of the Peanut Island bunker museum is offering to work with Nantucket preservationists to restore the Nantucket location and outfit it in a similarly historic manner. Whether such a plan could move forward, however, is largely up to the town, which would have to issue a request for proposals before entering into any lease with Miller or anyone else interested in developing the bunker.

The prospect of yet another Kennedy museum may to some appear redundant. After all, there are many tributes to the late president in Massachusetts. But the Nantucket bunker reminds us of a time when the nation seemed closer to the edge of nuclear war than any time before or since. The bunker’s construction was wedged between the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, and although it is questionable just how much protection either it or its Florida counterpart would have afforded Kennedy during an all-out nuclear exchange, it was a precautionary measure that seemed anything but excessive.

One could argue that the world has become a much safer place in the intervening years, and in some senses that would be true. The Soviet Union dissolved, and with it, the then-largest military threat to the United States. Other fears, however, have filled the void once filled by the U.S.S.R. Today, as the number of nuclear-armed nations continues to grow, we could quickly find ourselves looking at another time of heightened fears.

Nantucket should, at the very least, consider the prospect of a bunker museum, making sure that it performs the due diligence to avoid a repeat of the Peanut Island problems. Such a facility could serve as a reminder that when fear and anger arise, there is nothing quite like rational and informed discussion to defuse the charged atmosphere.

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